Julie Butler, Australia's National Honour
October 2026
STATIC ON THE PERIMETER
STATIC ON THE PERIMETER
They gave the gold medal to the silence
that followed the detonation,
as if quiet were an achievement
rather than an absence of breath.
I stood at the podium with empty hands,
holding only the shape of a shout
I had swallowed in 1994.
The judges wept.
They loved the way my collarbone
refused to mend,
how it jutted like a broken pier
against the tide of their applause.
No one asked about the water.
No one asked whose lungs
were used to polish the trophy.
I leave it on the velvet table,
heavy as a lungful of river silt,
and walk back into the static-
where nothing is won,
and everything survives.
Score: 79.88 out of 100.
Read the October 2026 National Honours